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All of that because the !@#$%^&* site decided to get difficult for a half an hour and repeatedly say "this page cannot be displayed" when I tried to post
So, time to get ramblin'. What did I think of "Lolita"? Since there are people popping into this thread who apparently haven't read it yet, so despite their esthetic shortcomings I'll continue to use spoiler blocks where appropriate (you'll notice one's prose style tends to become somewhat fancy after reading "Lolita").
For starters, I liked it. A lot. It's really a book that makes your head spin at times, and you have to be on your toes lest Nabokov or Humbert pull a fast one on you. KristoCat had an excellent example in the second post of this thread - that passage really chilled me when I read it. Something I find interesting in that aspect is that
before he actually, uh, consummates their relationship (and no, he consummating their relationship is not a mistake on the part of this poor non-English native) he tends to use a lot of sexual imagery in describing anything BUT Lolita - erect icecream cones etc. In fact, even AFTER he rapes her, he seems reluctant to view her as a sexual creature - hence the need to point out all the things she'd already done. He wants a child, not a woman.
The question kuroc poses above (apparently not having read the book, correct me if I'm wrong) actually remains after the book is over, at least for me. I agree with what ABC and KristoCat said earlier: Humbert doesn't - at least for the first 300 pages of the novel - love Lolita. He loves an idea of the "nymphet", the one he has been cultivating for 30 years before actually meeting her. He forces both himself and her to fit that idea, with predictable results.
Note the little passage when he picks Lo up from camp and at first doesn't see "his" Lolita in her anymore and just wants to give her "a sound education, a healthy and happy girlhood, a clean home, nice girl-friends of her age..." but then suddenly finds her "more of my Lolita than ever".
There's a lot of intertextuality in this, something I always enjoy. Poe is one thread throughout, Carmen is another, Flaubert pops up every now and then, and I'm sure there are others.
One of the few real "twists" in the story is that HH does NOT actually kill Lolita as the "Carmen" theme would suggest - at least not physically. The whole story seems to point towards that until she (somewhat conveniently) disappears.
Ah, yes, the convenience for the story of that kidnapping, making it possible for HH to not only NOT take responsibility for his own actions but even shift it to someone else. Something seemed terribly odd about that ending. Does Clare Quilty exist - or rather, does he actually take part in the story? The foreword does NOT mention that HH is in custody for murder - we have only his own word for that - and his accusation against CQ might as well be turned around on himself. Is the whole execution scene "real" in the sense of the story, or just another part of HH's attempts to exonorate himself?
HH, you lying poetical bastard. Towards the end, especially when he meets "grown-up" Dolly Schiller (a 17-year-old girl married to a handicapped soldier, living in poverty and about to die in childbirth - no, this is no happy ending; she never even gets to reach 18, the age which in most countries means you're considered an adult) he does seem to not only acknowledge what he did to her but even profess to love HER, rather than an abstract "nymphet". For the first time we get a glimpse of what actually goes on inside Lo's head rather than what he projects onto her (compare to his coldly detached observations earlier that she would cry herself to sleep every night, as if this was something that wasn't his business in the least). HOWEVER, Humbert, you hypocritical asshole: the entire book is supposedly written in jail, after the fact. If HH had, by the end of the narrative - which is to say before writing the book - come to understand what he did to Lolita, why the hell would he earlier in the book intimate again and again and again that SHE initiated it, that he loved her, that it's just the morals of the 20th century that forbid his pure love for a child, that he was "nature's faithful hound"? Why this:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we.
HH appears to repent. But the repenting Humbert is the SAME Humbert as the non-repentant Humbert. Not only is he unreliable - he's not even consistent!
kuroc said:
Isn't Lolita about a grown man in love with a little girl?
On one level - and with the caveat above - it is. Nabokov's afterword seems to reject any other interpretation (then again, artists should never be the only ones allowed to tell us what their works are "really" about. Bob Dylan once said all his songs were about "three or four minutes".) But I like the image Nabokov paints at the beginning of that text, about a monkey learning to draw and drawing the bars of its cage. HH believes himself to be the one trapped and spends the entire book waxing poetic about this, when in fact he is the one building the cage.
Again, no it's NOT. It's about Humbert Humbert. It's about the trappings both of our own desires and about the way power works (in the words of Joss Whedon: "Power to the people who are powerful enough to crush the other people", and crush he does). It's about lies, and deceit, but it's most emphatically NOT about Lolita. She never exists. Poor Dolores does, but neither we nor HH know her - biblical sense of the word excepted. Lolita/Lo/Dolly/Dolores is, by the end, if you'll pardon my French, thoroughly f***ed in every sense of THAT word - not only by Humbert, but by everyone.
"Lolita" should make all of us--parents, social workers, educators--apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world.
Well I've just begun. Right at the start I can see in HH a very sick man. His catagorization of the nymphette aka demoniac girls between the ages of 9-14 seems to set the stage to later absolve himself of full responsibility for what I know is to eventually take place between he (an adult male) and Lo (a child) later in the book. At this early stage he is aware of his depravity but I can see him even in the first chapters extricating himself from control over it.
Good question. Depends on how you mean. Of course, all fiction writers lie - that's what we pay them to do. And the foreword is, of course, an outright lie; "Lolita" is not a morality tale. The bit at the end, well... like I said, I NEVER trust anything an artist says about his/her own works, ESPECIALLY when they deny that it's metaphorical or autobiographical. Also, I believe he says that the original Russian short story that served as the inspiration for "Lolita" was destroyed, but it's been published since, hasn't it?
On a whole, I'd say VN is more of a trickster than a liar. Semantics. Feel free to expand on that, though, I'm curious. I've only read it once, you know!
Names are really important here, aren't they?
Dolly Schiller dies in childbirth. Marriage is Dolly's Killer. At least if we believe HH.
Interesting question, about who is lying: HH, Nabokov, or both. We know HH lies, to the reader, to Lolita, and to himself.
But Nabokov... I think that if he does lie, he also enables the reader to get at the truth. He could state things one way, and if you were reading at a casual level you might either a) be fooled or b) know he was lying, but not what the truth was. I think if you dig, you can find truth in Nabokov's writing. It's still possible to figure out what exactly is going on, as opposed to someone like Thomas Pynchon (here I'm thinking of The Crying of Lot 49).
Anyway. I don't have a copy of Lolita or any of my old papers with me at the moment so I can't dig up an appropriate quote for you. That's just MHO based on what I remember.
I requested Lolita through inter-library loan and picked it up today. I've only read the first few chapters, but I am liking it so far. This will be a discussion to look forward to. I was thinking that I should have read it a few years ago when I was doing my abnormal psych paper, but it was one of those titles I just kept putting on the back burner.
So I'm a bit further in and I have to say the writing certainly is beautiful. Reading Humgert's descriptions of his Lo really put you right into his sick frame of mind and I can actually feel his desires/excitement. How gross is that? Lo's mother just kicked the bucket and it's so interesting how he feels perfectly justified to capitalize on the situation to attempt to drug and rape Lo. Also I'm amazed he has the balls (at least so far in my reading) to hide her mother's death from her.
As far as Lo's flirtations (at least up to this point) it's not out of the realm of what some girls her age do to grab the attention of adults (sad I know but it happens) and she is lacking any other strong adult male figures in her life. Of course Humbert, the smart man he is, is perfectly positioned to capitalize on this. Notice how in the car, on the way out of the summer camp and early at the hotel (I think), he takes a semi-firm (no pun intended) stance and reproaches her lightly for flirting with him. Of course this is merely going to 1. drive her on 2. help him later place some of the blame on Lo.
Notice how in the car, on the way out of the summer camp and early at the hotel (I think), he takes a semi-firm (no pun intended) stance and reproaches her lightly for flirting with him. Of course this is merely going to 1. drive her on 2. help him later place some of the blame on Lo.
Further along still now. Now I'm REALLY starting to hate HH. He tells Lo her mum is dead only as an abrupt punishment for some trite perceived wrong doing on her part. Now we read that Lo is crying every night while he plays asleep. Hmmm... and he's got a gun I see. His justifications are NEARLY flawless but every once in a while we can see that he knows what he is doing is wrong. I can't think of any direct quotes and I don't have Lolita with me at the moment but I remember him using words like imprisonment when referring to their travels. I'd like to hear/read a really good analysis of this man's character.
Well I finished Lolita this evening. What I can surely say is that reading Lolita is like merely skimming Lolita. There is simply so much to be harvested from this book. I feel I've only the barest skeleton of an impression about all of the ideas in this book. The book begs to be re-read and studied to reveal all of itself. I'll be watching this thread and it's more sophisticated cousin to try and glean some gems from all of you.
Well I finished Lolita this evening. What I can surely say is that reading Lolita is like merely skimming Lolita. There is simply so much to be harvested from this book. I feel I've only the barest skeleton of an impression about all of the ideas in this book. The book begs to be re-read and studied to reveal all of itself.
Very, very well put, doctor. (I think of you as Dr. Mary Jane White, DVM who wears her brown hair in a braid. ) And every rereading makes you want to read it just one more time looking for missed clues.
I'm actually a very light blonde. I do have long hair but no braid.
I haven't seen the film(s) but if I remember right Jeremy Irons plays HH in one yes? He is a fine actor. I watch a lot more films in the winter when it's chilly out so I'll put it on my TBW list (to be watched).
) And every rereading makes you want to read it just one more time looking for missed clues.